Thematic stamp collecting along conceptual lines has never really caught hold. There was a great gold medal collection making the rounds of the APS Champion of Champion shows several years ago entitled “Murder” where the collector sought to portray how murder was shown on stamps from individual murderers to genocide (such as the Holocaust). But few […]
In the 1970s Public Auctions were much more frequent (and there were far more philatelic auction companies) and there was no Internet. Auction firms sent out a thousand or so auction catalogs to their best customers and mainly solicited bids by mail. There was no email or fax machines, few phone bids and no live computer bidding Because
A Great Auction Purchase Read More »
Most people involved in this hobby are glad to tell you of their great finds. Last week John Murray died and he was involved in one of the great finds of the last thirty years in the entire hobby of philately. And it was at my expense. In 1995, I bought a pretty mediocre quality
The One That Got Away Read More »
The stamps of Newfoundland have always been a favorite with philatelists. The internal demand in Newfoundland itself is small because the population of that province is small but the philately of Newfoundland is interesting and has always attracted Canadian collectors, British Commonwealth collectors and US collectors. The stamps are interesting and well engraved. The first
The popularity of a country’s stamps varies with the popularity of the government in power. Japanese stamps were very popular in the 1920’s and fell off tremendously in the the 1930’s and 1940’s before renewing their popularity after World War II. The stamps of Iran were very popular until the last twenty years. They are
The world is just a few dictators away from a radically different Arab world. Americans are fond of thinking that it is something peculiar to our character that has made this country great. Perhaps so. But never underestimate the significance of good government (Good government believe it or not is what we have. It is
Bill Evans was a already an avid collector when he started coming to our auctions some thirty years ago. He was of Hungarian descent and gravitated towards Hungarian philately. He became particularly interested in a specialized area of Hungarian philately called Hungarian Occupations – hundreds of different stamps issued in the aftermath of WW I for various
Sadness on the Auction Floor Read More »
The most basic decision that most collectors make is whether to collect stamps mint or used. In the very earliest stages of collecting either will do and, at the very highest stages, finances often force either to do. But most collectors start saving both and then gravitate to one or the other. The decision comes
Of the major world wide powers in the philately era (that is since 1840) the least imperialistic has been the United States. Great Britain and France had between them hundreds of imperial philatelic entities. German was a big player and even Italy, which had more of an appetite for conquest than the digestion, had fifty